BBC Television Centre, London (cont)
Liz Molyneux, Editorial Executive, Factual Commissioning
Matt Morris, Head of News, Radio Five Live
Neil Nightingale, Head of Natural History Unit
Paul Brannan, Deputy Head of News Interactive
Peter Horrocks, Head of Television News
Peter Rippon, Duty Editor, World at One/PM/The World this Weekend
Phil Harding, Director, English Networks & Nations
Steve Mitchell, Head Of Radio News
Sue Inglish, Head Of Political Programmes
Frances Weil, Editor of News Special Events

BREAKING: Confirmed flooding on NYSE. The trading floor is flooded under more than 3 feet of water.

BREAKING MT @jhlipton: Con Ed shut down lower Manhattan system due to high tides

BREAKING: Con Edison has begun shutting down ALL power in Manhattan

BREAKING: CON EDISON SHUTTING OFF ALL POWER IN NEW YORK CITY AT 3AM IN ANTICIPATION OF POWER SURGES FROM HURRICANE SANDY

This is a real pity for two reasons. First of all it makes me wish quartering were back. Secondly, Mr Tripathi could have simply chosen a more appropriate career, for example writing the following for eager audiences at Grist, 350.org, SkepticalScience and/or The Guardian:

BREAKING: Confirmed threat of future flooding on NYSE. The trading floor might be flooded under more than 3 feet of water by the end of the century

BREAKING MT @jhlipton: Con Ed could shut down lower Manhattan system due to high tides in 2080

BREAKING: Con Edison will possibly begin shutting down ALL power in Manhattan in the 2100′s

BREAKING: CON EDISON MAY BE FORCED TO SHUT OFF ALL POWER IN NEW YORK CITY AT 3AM ON OCTOBER 4, 2124 IN ANTICIPATION OF POWER SURGES FROM HURRICANE WHATEVER

Anthony Watts of WUWT has been kind enough to host “The Unknown Skeptic – Journalism, awaiting to be freed“, a rather long essay of mine of the work done by James Painter and others in order to identify what makes climate change skeptical voices audible and readable more or less often in six countries.

The original and twice-as-long essay, divided in seven parts, was published on this site at the beginning of February 2012 (starting point here).

Finally and BTW, let me top this shameless self-promotion and elevate this comment left at WUWT:

Your piece is a feast of ideas that I think will fertilize others to write an avalanche of additional posts on the virtues of hard core scientific skepticism toward the IPCC ‘consensus’ / ‘settled’ alarming climate science.

I really liked your, “Rather differently than Isaac Newton, Dr Painter might have found himself not on the shoulder of giants, but under the boots of minions.”

If you are a climatologist and you want to survive as a climatologist, perhaps even increasing your reputation, all you have to do is provide the exact diagnosis and prognosis that people expect.

To the question “Is the climate changing?“, by all means, never, ever reply “No, everything’s normal“, or “It’s just fakery pumped up by newspapers and on television“: because people would unanimously conclude that you understand nothing about metereology, and nothing about climate.

It would be the end of your career.

The only sensible answer is: “Of course it is changing! It’s a well-known fact, scientifically confirmed and one that none cannot argue against“. You can then launch yourself in forecasting for the next hundred years a climate identical to the current one, amplifying the latest phenomena to extreme consequences.

If it is cold you’ll therefore predict “ice ages“, if it’s warm a “torrid period“, and if there are signs of strong variability “short-term climatic extremes” and more-or-less the same climate in the long term.

You may be wondering, how can a serious climatologist provide impossible, mutually-excluding forecasts without looking silly? Fear not: science will provide all the support needed.

Because climatology has already thought of everything and will supply the right solution in every circumstance, even in the most hopeless cases.

So if it is cold, here’s what you will have to say: “The climate is changing and we are approaching an Ice Age.

This fact has already been scientifically assessed because since 1940, the average temperature of the northern hemisphere has diminished by approximately 0,4°C, probably because of a decrease in atmospheric transparency due to air pollution.

The cooling of the air causes an increase in the extension of glaciers and of snow fields, furthering lowering temperatures with their highly reflecting (high albedo) surfaces. Glaciers therefore increase even more, in a positive feedback that will bring us to a new Ice Age in a hundred years or even less“.

What if it is warm? Then the discourse becomes: “The climate is changing and we are approaching a Torrid Age.

This fact has already been scientifically assessed because since 1850 the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere has progressively increased and just in the last twenty years has gone from 315 to 334 parts for million. That means that in 2020 the accumulation of carbon dioxide will have more than doubled, taking into account the continuously increasing energy demands and consumption of fossil fuels.

The increase of carbon dioxide reduces the Earth’s long-wave emissions to space (greenhouse effect) so within half a century the average air temperature will increase by approximately 2 or 3°C; the polar ice will dissolve and a sizeable sea level increase will submerge several coastal cities“.

Doug – thanks for the reply. I can feel some major fundamental disagreements on the approach.

(I do hope you appreciate frankness, and rest assured I am not trying to convince you of anything!)

1. You say you don’t know much about positive tipping points. Like with Adam Corner’s psychosocial studies only of skeptics, this doesn’t sound like the wisest way towards understanding tipping points in general and independently from their “policy value”.

2. You say you “would expect a policy maker to take in information from a large number of sources on this”. But you’re aware the policy maker will never hear about positive tipping points, from anybody at all. This removes value to the advice and information you yourself provide, sort of telling a ship’s captain to steer away from the continent port-side whilst the two of you don’t notice the island approaching from starboard.

3. You are of the opinion that “there is a strong argument that an abrupt change in climate would likely affect social and ecological systems negatively”. Not really. I can see the problem from a Development Studies perspective thanks to some University-level studies of mine in that respect. There is an approach there called “Vulnerability Analysis”, where poverty is defined in terms of number and size of one’s vulnerabilities. Abrupt change of any sort of course will affect negatively the most vulnerable, simply because almost everything affects negatively the most vulnerable. Imagine somebody starving for a week, even eating food will become a risky activity for them.

This tells us nothing about the negativity of the change. OTOH the effect of the change on the less-vulnerable will depend on what kinds of vulnerability they suffer from. A priori, it is impossible to tell if change and even abrupt change will be overall negative or positive.

For example the invention of the internal combustion engine has been an abrupt, enormous effect on societies everywhere, but who would say it has been negative in general? And like there is no such a thing as a “system” of people that is mostly tuned to a particular environment (travel from Iceland to Senegal to see how flexible human societies are), just as well what happened at Krakatoa means “systems” of the wild can recover in amazing fashions.

Therefore, there cannot be any “strong argument” of the kind you describe. Perhaps there is a diffuse opinion that change=bad and abrupt change=awful, but it is an opinion, not a scientific finding.

4. Your final statement is perfectly logical but conveys a curious, illogical message. You say, “if there was a really large change in some aspect of the climate over, say, the next decade (anthropogenic or not), and climate science hadn’t at least warned about it, you would rightfully be angry”. Perhaps me, but surely whoever is paying for climate change research.

This is some form of recursive logic.

(a) Somebody finances climate change research with the aim of understanding if there is change in the pipeline and of what kind. This makes sense.

(b) Researchers whose job is to work about climate change with the aim of etc etc, in the face of obvious, enormous difficulties in providing what’s been requested think about how best to fulfil their duty. This makes sense.

(c) As the duty is to be able to warn in advance of changes, those researchers arrive at the conclusion that, if anything happens and they didn’t warn about it, they will be seen as a failure at their job/profession. This makes sense.

(d) Therefore, those researchers make sure they describe all the possibile negativities, so that nobody will be able to say, “you didn’t warn us about this”. This makes sense.

However, the end result is that the researchers don’t focus any longer on understanding if there is change in the pipeline and of what kind, but mostly on figuring out all the bad things that might happen, and assigning each a probability.

This makes no sense. The information finally provided risks reading like plain-language Nostradamus prophecies with informed risk estimates attached to them. If we did the same exercise about health risks in the home, there would be a law against entering bathrooms and kitchens.

I’m a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name [Wonko the Sane] is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that. I’ll show you something to demonstrate that later. So, the other reason I call myself Wonko the Sane is so that people will think I am a fool. That allows me to say what I see when I see it. You can’t possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you’re a fool.

Plus of course it’s a Press Release so who knows how many newspapers and websites will simply reprint it as-is propagating a rather nasty and completely unfounded rumor about the President of the United States!!

The study is based on the usual wholesale vapidity of bombastic statements made meaningless by the absence of any quantification

The climate science community has arrived at a consensus regarding both the reality of rapid, anthropogenic climate change and the necessity of urgent and sustained action to avoid its worst environmental, economic and social consequences

Having switched off their brains to accept the ‘consensus’, the authors forgot to turn them back on before writing gems like

Unlike financial fraud or terrorist attacks, climate change does not register, emotionally, as a wrong that demands to be righted. As a result, many individuals, even those who believe that climate change is a problem, may feel complacent in delaying immediate — and costly — ameliorative action, such as investing in alternative-energy technologies or reducing one’s own energy use

Markowitz and Shariff clearly don’t understand that “climate change” belongs to the future, whilst financial fraud and terrorist attacks belong also to the past and present. They don’t even understand that “ameliorative action” has nothing to do with “reducing one’s own energy use” (a wishy-washy commitment for anybody bothering to do the maths), and that “investing in alternative-energy technologies” is pointless unless the cost is linked to some benefit, with the benefit being larger than the cost that is.

Another classic:

the more space there is for uncertainty the more wishful thinking we have

As if. Markowitz and Shariff are dangerously toying there with the idea of becoming totally anti-scientific. As per another of Curry’s posts, “Uncertainty is a necessary ingredient in the recipe for discovery. Certainty gets in the way of discovery because we are not inclined to investigate further the things we think we know for certain“. From this POV, “certainty” is the realm of the uninterested ignorant, the last type of people that is who could possibly do anything meaningful about climate change.

There are more signs of science having taken a leave of absence from Nature Climate Change in this case. The authors list “six psychological challenges posed by climate change to the human moral judgement system” (table 1) and “six psychological strategies that communicators can use to bolster the recognition of climate change as a moral imperative” (table 2). Perish the thought that having six items on both tables suggest there is not science behind, rather the style of self-help manuals (aware perhaps of the problem, the blog minimolecule recommended by Judith forgets to mention the 5th item of table 2, “Expand group identity“).

Anyway, the biggest flaw of the study lies elsewhere. It appears deeply contradictory. If the

in depth cognitive processing required to negotiate our way through these problems leads to poor activation of moral reasoning

the authors should have demonstrated first if and how their own moral reasoning hadn’t been properly “activated”. The same applies to all other points in table 1. Psychomagically, the authors believe themselves immune from something they claim is affecting a large part of humanity.

This sounds clearly and deeply immoral, just like the continuous underlying suggestion that people who don’t believe it’s time for unspecified “costly ameliorative action” are somehow anti-environment (this is a common anti-ethical thinking trait of climate activists, as demonstrated by its ugly head rearing again in the description of the upcoming Policy Exchange event “A Greener Shade of Blue” in London).

And as for the topic of the paper: IMNSHO the biggest obstacle in moving forward on climate change is that activist-communicators keep trying to reduce an issue that is “complex, abstract and cognitively challenging” to “It didn’t snow last January” or “March was weird”. And those are clear evidences of “poor activation of moral reasoning” on the part of those communicators.

If you fancy yourself as a photographer and believe in the power of images to change the way we think and feel, then why not try your hand at capturing an image which describes a sustainable UN? […] All entries must speak to the theme, Visions of a Sustainable UN.

A team from Cyprus have been announced as the winners of 2011 Greening the Blue Photo Competition which has been run in collaboration with the UN Photographic Society to celebrate World Environment Day 2011.

Here’s the winner: “The judges felt the winning entry managed to capture several important elements of how the UN can become a more sustainable organisation” such as recycling itself and the fears it keeps spreading presumably

Recycling the UN

Runner-up: “…on a technology that is truly sustainable“, i.e. somebody is dreaming we all get on our bikes really, no matter if it’s the middle of the winter and there’s no baobab trees around

the difference between 1998 and 2010 is in the hundredths of a degree, and most of the attribution work on recent climate changes is looking at longer term trends, not year to year variability. However, there is now consistency across the data sets that 2005 and 2010 likely topped 1998 as the warmest years in the instrumental record

In HadCRUT4, the hottest years on record are 2010 and 2005, with 1998 right behind in a statistical tie.

From the quotes above, it is difficult to ascertain if Gavin Schmidt has any understanding of the meaning of a difference “in the hundredths of a degree” (hint: for all scientific intents and purposes, it’s a difference of zero). The point that “there is now consistency across the data sets” seems to indicate an obsession with numbers and a forgetfulness of the underlying physical aspects of climate.

Even Dana Nuccitelli, amid the usually flurry of anti-skeptic rants and dubious interpretations passed as Truth, appears to have a better grasp on science itself.

Note that among the scarce number of comments (83), a couple of people try to make this simple point, only to be told by the likes of tamino that it doesn’t matter because of evil skeptics of course. As if surgeons would regularly use subpar anaesthesia justifying themselves by saying there are evil doctors out there doing far worse.

This Sunday marks the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day. Once again, we can expect an all-out assault covering all communication channels, a barrage of all the most stale ideas concocted by the most backward-looking eco-obsession. The future is going to be painted bleak picture by a never-ending swarm of whiners, and the only hope offered some kind of “green repentance”, including the return to a pre-Neandertalian lifestyle.

And that is a shame. Because this Earth of ours is a truly beautiful planet, full of wonders, rich grasslands and forests, amazing canyons and sunsets, fantastic oceans and mountainous landscapes and creatures of all shapes and sizes.

We should all celebrate. We should celebrate the much progress achieved since 1970AD, the improving of quality of our air and water, the return from the edge of extinction of a large number of species. Indeed, these are the days of resurgence for the short-tailed Albatross in the islands of Hawai’i. And the days when we find out that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, often a source of endless alarms, has told he world that it currently impossible to determine if the climate has really become more extreme.

Instead, we will be bombarded by ads and news and ads masquerading as news, all nourishing a nihilistic environmentalism always ready to torments us, interested not so much in the enjoyment of the beauty of nature and its wondered, rather in fighting humanity, its prosperity and its abundance.

And yet those are exactly the basis of the nature of humanity, and of its ability to adapt, thrive and innovate, to be able to improve its life and the rest of nature’s, to get rid of the ravages of centuries past.

Enough with the environmentalism that tortures science and common sense to manufacture fear. Enough with the old, depression-inducing alarmism.

Remember, we are also the Earth and the Earth is also us too. There is no “choice” to be made between us and the Earth. This planet rhetorically describes as “fragile” is instead home to tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes and strong winds and ocean currents. It is also home to us, Humanity, children of the same Earth as every other form of life. Therefore we are Forces of Nature too, incrediably adaptable to, and able to cope with and surviving, the rest of the planet.

In those days, Dr Abdalati didn’t deem it necessary to mention time frames when speaking of “In a worst-case scenario, enormous ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica could melt and raise sea levels by up to 1 meter, suggests Waleed Abdalati, …It’s estimated that more than a hundred million lives are potentially impacted by a one-meter increase in sea level“

In the Autumn of 2007, Dr Abdalati got his stardom moment thanks to the disappearing summer Arctic sea ice cover. To AP he said “I don’t pay much attention to one year … but this year the change is so big, particularly in the Arctic sea ice, that you’ve got to stop and say, ‘What is going on here?’ You can’t look away from what’s happening here…This is going to be a watershed year“

Around the Copenhagen 2009 COP-13 Conference, Dr Abdalati had no qualms in suggesting “there seems to be a sense that perhaps we are acting too late…People can quarrel about whether temperature has changed 1 degree or 1.5 degrees in the last so many years, but the presence or absence of ice is very tangible, as is the idea of oceans rising and inundating coastal areas“

In conclusion, seldom in the past or maybe never has Dr Abdalati (whose contribution to the founding of advocacy center CIRES isn’t immediately clear) been far from alarmist positions, even if he is not known as a major voice of doom and gloom. And that Slide 17 above might provide some hope (as long as the guy wakes up about GISS, that is).

(1) I won’t hold my breath waiting for some of the involved folks to wake up to the idea that if they write something as “NASA Head of this” or “NASA Head of that”, then ipso facto their statements will be taken as “Official NASA Position” on this or that.

In the private sector, anything one writes in the course of business is of course considered what his/her company thinks about that course of business. How can it be any different?

(2) NASA doesn’t live in a vacuum. It can’t play the Ivory Tower Scientist today, and the Federal Agency tomorrow. If the Government pursues one particular line of thought (eg for worry of dangerous climate change), then NASA of course is pursuing that same line of thought.

Therefore…NASA has a very big OFFICIAL POSITION on climate change indeed.

We assume that our previous letter to you, attached, somehow slipped your attention as we realise that you are really busy and may have been away. We do assure you that we will not be writing to you repeatedly.

However, because of the urgent need for action on climate change and health, illustrated by events in the last few months, we are taking the liberty of contacting you again to request support for the XXX. The carbon price legislation before the Australian parliament still faces much political and public opposition even though Australia is one of the heaviest carbon emitters in the world. Meanwhile, the capricious climate and extreme weather events in Australia this year, including severe flooding, especially Queensland, and ferocious bushfires in WA, make it clear we cannot afford to delay preventive action further. Drought and famine in Sub-Saharan Africa and floods again in Pakistan illustrate the disadvantage of developing countries and the imperative of more help from the developed world.

XXX focus is climate change and health but as you will agree, this requires as strong mitigation and adaptation as we, as a society, can muster.

…

XXX biggest problem is lack of funding. To date members have worked with “pro bono” and “in kind”. Funding needs are modest but necessary to undertake a series of planned projects. It is seeking to raise $150,000 from private sources to deliver on its policy, research and advocacy priorities and enable it to remain independent.

Administrative and operational costs, including office and phone = $20K

In addition, we would like to fund priority research, to be agreed by the executive, for funding Masters and PhD students up to $50K and to also fund conference development and attendance up to $50K.

We do believe that the work of XXX would link well with that of your Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney and with your agreement, would like to establish contact.

We would be happy to provide you with any other information you require, set up a conference call with you, or meet face-to-face. XXX is will be attending the Durban conference on Climate Change and Health in December and XXX will be in the UK again in February 2012.

…

It would be wonderful and extremely helpful if you could provide some funding for this developing group and, of course, we would acknowledge any support you could provide.

How is this news if the results are not statistically significant? Or do people not know what that means? Once you take that into account what they are saying is: News flash – global temperature has not increased since 1998!

That’s a completely meaningless statement, because it is supremely illogical. If a person defers judgment to somebody else, obviously what that person writes has no value at all: we should always be looking for the opinion of “somebody else”. Anybody arguing “don’t listen to me, listen to somebody else” is a prisoner of twisted logic, as the first part of that sentence negates the second one. Therefore there is no point debating with them.

“Much of the contents of [Mann’s] book is old news“, according to Peter Gleick. In fact, an entire day spent at a website owned by somebody who interviewed the Man, has turned out nothing more than statements accompanied by “that’s nothing new” and “for those buried in the intellectual wastes of the Murdoch media – it will be brand new territory“.

IOW the general consensus appears to be that there is nothing in Mann’s book that has not already been mentioned, described or referred to somewhere on the web (and, I suspect, in the Climategate emails). Somebody tried to make the point that, according to agiographers, Mann’s book contains enough “to spark a dozen Master’s theses“. But that is not the point.

The point is, what would one find in Mann’s book that is nowhere else? Who knows…an insight, a revealing detail, whatever, anything as long as it is new. There has to be a reason to buy and then read the book, right?

According to Mann’s own supporters, the answers to those questions are still “nothing” and “none”. Well, no wonder Mann is ever so bothered about his enemies…with friends like Mann’s, no one needs enemies!